Anticreation in media
From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science
The belief in Biblical creationism, and in particular that the earth is 6000-10,000 years old is ridiculed by the news, educational programming, and in popular culture. Examples of popular culture anticreation can be found in shows like "The Simpsons", "Sopranos", "Family Guy", "South Park" and "Evan Almighty" where creationism is projected as a belief that is only held by people unable to think for themselves.
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The Simpsons
In The Simpsons, there is an episode where the character Ned Flanders, a devout Christian, enters a museum of natural science, and he is shocked to see that they are promoting evolution, he then sees an artifact called "the indisputable fossil record" as if the fossil record supported the theory of evolution when the fossil record contains no transitional forms. Ned then hides his sons' eyes from it and attempts to drag them out of the museum, and later complains to Rev. Lovejoy about the museum. It also portrays creationism as the belief that "God created" is in of itself the defintion of creation science when this is far from the truth, creationist see what is testable, observable and repeatable as science, the belief that God created (or that evolution created), is untestable and hence unscientific due to the fact that God doesn't engage in acts of creation anymore; He simply sustains what is there.[1]
Family Guy
On Family Guy, creation science is again portrayed as the belief that "God created". Something that differs from Family Guy and The Simpsons though is that in Family Guy, Peter Griffin makes it seem like believers in creationism or Intelligent Design believe that the Theory of Evolution is "an individual organism that gets better and better". This author does not know of any creationist who thinks this is what the Theory of Evolution explains or predicts. Both creationists and evolutionists agree with a "change in allele frequency over time", to say that creationists disagree with this is a stretch of imagination. Where creationists and evolutionists disagree is that evolutionists believe that mutations which do not add information to the genome but rather distort it, is the mechanism by which cells can become men over long periods of time.[2]
The Sopranos
In an episode of the gangster series The Sopranos, mob boss Tony Soprano is in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound, where he is visited by a young evangelical minister. The minister is portrayed as an ignorant fool; he uses a dinosaur book that Tony had to try to explain that dinosaurs didn't live millions of years ago because "the Bible says that just isn't true." Tony asks him how Adam and Eve could have lived in the Garden of Eden with a carnivorous tyrannosaurus, and instead of explaining that tyrannosaurs would have been vegetarians back then, instead gives him a book and leaves. The show attempts to indoctrinate viewers with the idea that all evangelicals are irrational and ignorant, and furthermore that they are incapable of debate. Tony then talks with an atheistic engineer, and the engineer (of course) is portrayed as rational and scientific, and convinces Tony that all things are connected and that everything creationism proposes is false. Tony wants to hear more, but the engineer is going in for surgery to have his larynx (voice box) removed; a metaphor on the part of the writers to demonstrate how the voice of "reason" is being silenced in today's culture, which is an obvious contradiction to the reality that evolution is supported by many, whereas creationism is the belief that is suppressed.
South Park
In an episode of South Park, a teacher refuses to teach evolution, but is eventually forced to, and so ridicules the belief. Richard Dawkins later makes an appearance in the episode.
Evan Almighty?
A sequel to the popular film Bruce Almighty, Evan Almighty is a film about a man contacted by God (as portrayed by Morgan Freeman) and charged with building an Ark. The film apparently chronicles Evan's transmutation from a sharp businessman to a bearded stereotype of a patriarch, with multitudes of animals flocking to his boat-building project.
Related References
- An Analysis of Homer Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould by William A. Dembski
- The Simpsons as shown on YouTube
- The Simpsons satire special creation
- Family Guy as shown on YouTube
- The trouble with TV
- Mrs. Garrison teaches about Evolution (Mature content)
See Also
External links
- The Media Assault on American Values by Culture and Media Institute.
